Tramp the dirt down

For some weird physio-psychological reason that I began to notice in my 30s, certain songs are far more likely to choke me up in the early morning. And so it was that I was driving to work last week when my car's satellite radio provider served up Sharon Van Etten's recent cover of "Black Boys on Mopeds," a Sinead O'Connor song that came out almost 30 years ago. It destroyed me.

Van Etten is the alt-rock chanteuse who attracted regional attention a few months ago with the release of her video for "No One's Easy To Love," which made maximum use of the chilly Brutalist architecture of the Empire State Plaza. She sings the daylights out of "Black Boys on Mopeds," which made its debut on O'Connor's 1990 album "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got."

The song, which describes racial violence and economic injustice in what was still Margaret Thatcher's Britain, has an icy, almost clinical fury that only gives way near the end, when O'Connor's vocal builds to a keen. "I love my boy, and that's why I'm leaving," she sings. "I don't want him to be aware that there's any such thing as grieving."

The obligation to children — meaning the future — is at the heart of my second-favorite musical rebuke to Thatcher and her ilk: Elvis Costello's "Tramp the Dirt Down," a 1989 track in which Costello hopes to live long enough to stomp on Thatcher's grave.

Both of those songs meant a lot to me when they first came out. I was in my early 20s, and only starting to think quasi-seriously about politics. Like the study of other forms of history, remembering how the pop stars of yesteryear channeled their political fury offers a tonic reminder that, much as we like to believe that we are living in singularly awful times, previous generations were equally certain of the shabbiness of their leaders and cultural moments.

Which might sound like a lot of throat-clearing as I attempt to understand why, even as a massive hurricane bore down on the southeastern U.S., I found myself completely captivated by the political drama playing out in the British House of Commons as it approached something akin to a final reckoning with the three-year tumult of Brexit.

If you've only seen clips of proceedings in Parliament instead of extended sessions, you're missing out. This week included some truly memorable installments of the traditional "question time," when the prime minister is obliged to respond to pointed questions from his opponents, studded with rhetorical barbed wire and slathered in the elaborate language of protocol ("the right honorable gentleman" etc.).

For those studying the conduct of newly installed Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it was like seeing a man being presented with the IOU on some enormous karmic debt. His sixth week at the helm saw him lose over and over again, and blocked him from allowing the country to crash out of the European Union at the end of October without a deal that answers at least the major questions about how its trade portals will operate after a departure.

Many have compared Johnson to President Donald J. Trump, inasmuch as he's fond of using clownish behavior to distract from sweeping bad-faith arguments and policy blunders, plus the ridiculous hair. He is also a major fan of sexist insults, such as calling Liberal leader Jeremy Corben a "great big girl's blouse" (British for wuss) off-mic during this week's debate and last month referring to his Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, as a "girly swot" (a word that, I have discovered, refers to the sort of type-A student known on this side of the pond as a "grind") in a handwritten note.

But Johnson is legislatively more wily than Trump, as evidenced by his decision to call for a speedy suspension of Parliament proceedings, a move known as "prorogation" that requires the approval of Queen Elizabeth. This move, however, prompted previous fence-sitters in both the Liberal and Conservative parties to come to the conclusion that the abuse of parliamentary traditions had gone far enough. They've also checked him from calling for early elections before the current Brexit deadline.

Now, like most Americans and Britons I have no idea how this is all going to end. This week's defeats for Johnson could turn out to be just part of a brilliant plan to short-circuit the opposition, purge the Conservative party of its anti-Brexit caucus and storm out of the EU like a latter-day, slightly more svelte Winston Churchill. Or he could be the shortest-tenured PM in British history (he's up against George Canning, who lasted 119 days).

But as a nation about to enter the dark tunnel of a presidential election year, it's heartening to see the reaffirmation of democratic mores after years in which Brexit's backers have peddled false promises and bad data to get their way. It feels a little bit like catharsis — the sort of thing I used to get more regularly from serious-minded music.

Which begs the question: Where is the great British pop from the age of Brexit? And for that matter, where is the best American music to engage with the Trump administration? As we wait for the next shoe to drop — on the floor or on someone's political grave — I'm open to suggestions.